Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration (22 page)

The guy who’d paid the judge seven hundred thousand dollars, and Johnny was pretty sure it wasn’t for a condo with a boat slip.

He prowled through the house until, through the French doors that led out to an expansive back patio, he spied Dan.
 

Still slightly disheveled, standing in a landscaped garden, beside the huge iron bowl of a hand-made firepot, Dan stood above the licking flames, feeding papers into it.

Johnny walked toward him, heart hammering in his chest.
 
It was only his good friend and business partner.
 
It was only a confrontation that was going to end someone’s life as he knew it. It was only the most fucked-up thing Johnny had dealt with in a lifetime of having fucked up things done to him and doing them right back again.
 
No big deal.

His hands felt cold.

He pushed one of the French doors open. Light must have glinted off the glass, because Dan froze. Then he spun, saw Johnny, and wiped a big smile across his face.
 

“Hey man, what’s up?”

Johnny stepped out onto the tiled porch.
 
“Thought you were headed to the FBI.”

“I was.
 
Am.
 
Just had to stop home first.
 
And honestly,” Dan lifted the beer in his hand with a sheepish expression.
 
“I know it’s eight in the morning, man, but I needed a drink.
 
Want one?”

When Johnny didn’t respond, Dan grabbed one of the boxes of papers that was sitting on a chair and dropped the box onto the ground beside the fire, away from Johnny.
 

“Have a seat.”

Johnny’s eyes never left him. “You going to tell me?”

Dan opened his mouth as if to say something, then stopped.
 
Instead, he closed his eyes, blew out a long breath, wiped both palms over his bearded face, then dropped them.

“Johnny, I can explain.”

Inside, in a high place Johnny hadn’t known existed, something fell. Like a block of stone off a high cliff, it began freefalling. It was so shocking a sensation, so far beyond what he knew about himself—this great chasm of emptiness—that he actually leaned back against the side of the house. But he kept his gaze on Dan.

“Start,” he said coldly.

Something determined crossed Dan’s face. He leaned forward, a hand out.
 
“Come on, Johnny, be reasonable.
 
There’s no need to make a big deal about this. We can fix it. We’ll change the valuation. No one wants Mrs. B to get screwed. It was a mistake. He’s sorry.”

“About what?”

Silence. He could almost hear Dan’s brain working.
   

“About what happened,” Dan said slowly,
 

“What happened with what?” Johnny said, just as slowly.

“The valuation.” It was just shy of being a question.

“And?”

“And…the rest,” Dan wavered, not committing to anything he didn’t have to yet. And then Johnny knew for sure.
 
Dan wasn’t a lawyer by trade, but he knew it by inclination, knew every step of taking someone down and making sure you were the last one standing.
 

Johnny pushed off the wall and stepped closer.
 
Dan stepped back.
 

“See, what I’m really interested in, Dan, is Northern Child Care Corp,” Johnny said, coming forward. “And R&M Corp.
 
And Roger Mendine.
 
And you.”

Dan exhaled, fast.
 
“Look, Johnny.”
 

“I’m looking, Dan.
 
And you’re in deep shit.”

Dan was sweating; Johnny could see the faint sheen on his neck.
 
That was worth something.
 
Not much, but in the shitfield to come, it was something, to know he’d given Dan a moment of fear that wouldn’t be equaled by anything but walking through the prison doors.

Johnny shoved his hands into his pockets so he didn’t punch Dan in the face.
 
It helped control the urge. A little.
 
Right now, he wanted answers.
 

Dan pulled one of the cushion-less lawn chairs toward him and sat down in it, maybe thinking to make himself into a smaller target.
 
“Johnny, you have to listen. It’s not what you think.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

Dan looked conscience-stricken. His eyebrows lowered, his eyes looked pained and sincere.
 
“Johnny, it was a mistake, a massive one, but it’s over. You have my word—”

“Your word?”

Dan stopped. His face was contorted between confusion and fear.
 

Johnny stood on the opposite side of the fire pit and looked at him through the high, licking flames.
 

“You’d have to explain to me how much your word is worth these days, Dan, but I actually don’t give a shit.
 
I’m more interested in getting some answers.”

“I don’t know what you wan—”

“Why don’t you start with Mendine and his two mil?”

“Johnny—”

“And Marcus Powers and his seven hundred thousand.”

“Jesus—”

“And you can wrap up with how much of a cut you got from it all.”

Dan’s face washed white.
 
“Shit.”

“So, just in a real general way, why don’t you tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“Johnny—”

He waited, but that’s all Dan said, in a strangled voice.
   

So Johnny sat down in one of the metal chairs and explained in a low voice exactly what the fuck was going on.

“See Dan, at first, we thought maybe the whole thing was just a kickback scheme for the construction build.
 
That’s bad, right?
 
Make a shitty deal for the county, overcharge tens or even hundreds of thousands, nepotism at its best, right?
 
But that’s just business as usual.
 
And it doesn’t really explain all the money that poured in
after
, does it?” he asked in a conversational tone.
 

Dan’s mouth had fallen open by now. He was breathing fast, staring.
 

“Does it, Dan?”

He gave his head a single, rapid shake.

“No, it doesn’t. Seven hundred thousand dollars, that’s a lot of money. You’ve got to wonder, who would like this fucking condo that much?”
 
Johnny smiled.

Dan shook his head slowly. His face was completely white.
 

“The bad thing for you, Dan, is that I know how these contracts work. Private jails need inmates. No inmates, no money. That’s a shitty business plan.
 
So they guarantee inmates. Put ‘guaranteed occupancy’ clauses right into the contracts. You know what ‘guaranteed’ means, Dan?
 
It means the county has to send enough kids to keep the cells full.
 
It’s better than a hotel. Eighty, ninety, maybe a hundred percent occupancy.
 
Or else the county pays penalties.
 
Huge fucking penalties.”

Johnny forced himself to keep sitting, kept his hands shoved down deep into his pockets. Dan’s scared eyes stared back at him as he went on.
 

“Penalties if there aren’t enough incarcerated kids.
 
You send the kids or you pay the penalty.
 
It’s an eating machine, Dan.
 
A kid-eating machine.
 
Crazy, isn’t it?” His eyes never left Dan’s.
 
“What do you think of that?”

As if he was being given a chance to confess, or repent, or maybe receive absolution, Dan started talking.
 
The words came tumbling out.

“Johnny, listen, you don’t understand.
 
Those old detention centers were shit. Infested with rats and shit, literally.
 
The plumbing was forty years old.
 
There was no ventilation.
 
You don’t know what goes on in those places, Johnny. I’m telling you—”

“Who says I don’t know?” Johnny interrupted, lethally low.

Dan’s mouth stayed open, but no words came out.

“Who says I don’t know what goes on in those places?” Johnny said again, then picked up his boot and shoved it against the side of the firepot with such force the huge heavy iron and carbon steel bowl flipped over.
 

It gave a monstrous crash as it smashed onto its side, squealing like a dying animal as it skidded over the tiled pavers, high-pitched and frantic, then it bashed into Dan’s shins.
 
Bright red sparks and burning embers flew up like fireworks, a shower of sparks and flaming paper pinwheeling through the air.
   

Dan stumbled backward, his hand out, his hair wild, his jaw dropped.
 
“Jesus Christ, Johnny, take it easy.
 
I—”

“I know what goes on in those places.”

Dan nodded, clearly terrified.

Johnny heard his own breath, hard and intense. “How many did Billings have to send?”

“How many—?”

“How many fucking kids,” Johnny lifted his boot and planted the bottom of it against the red-hot bowl of the firepot and gave it a shove, “did the fucking judge,” he shoved again, “agree to send to his fucking jail,” another shove, each one backing Dan up to the wall, “every fucking month?”

All the blood was gone from Dan’s face.
 
“Jesus—”

“And you, Dan?
 
How rich did you get off every kid?”

Dan skirted sideways, his palms up.
 
“Johnny, I didn’t know—”

Johnny stepped over the fire pit. “Better run, Dan.”

Dan bolted.
 

The door opened and Juliette stepped out.

Chapter Sixteen

EVERYONE froze.

Juliette stood stock still in the doorway and took it all in, as if time had slowed to a stop: Johnny, backing Dan up across the porch by means of a fire pit; Dan, his face washed white of color; the caw of a black crow as it flew overhead through the grey sky.

But that’s what you did when chaos broke out around you and people lost their minds; you got really, really still. That way, maybe you wouldn’t get noticed.

But that was kid stuff.
 
She wasn’t a kid anymore, and right now, if she didn’t do something, Johnny was going to do something drastic.
 
As if using a red-hot fire pit as a weapon wasn’t drastic.
 

No, Johnny was going to do something bad. Really bad.
 
Something dangerous.
 

So she swallowed her fear and stepped onto the patio.
 

Johnny looked as calm as ever except that his hair was a little rumpled and he was breathing a little faster than usual, and a tendril of smoke was coming up from one of his boots.
 

Dan, on the other hand, looked like he’d turned into the devil.

His face, so white a moment ago, turned red and mottled as he stared at her, his nostrils flared, his eyes wide and glaring.

“
You
,” he snarled softly, but his voice rose as he went.
 
“Your fault, you busybody, you fucking nosy
nobody
, you know-nothing, dead-end, piss-ant,
fucking
runt
,” he finished in a bellow. “It’s your fault.”

Johnny started for him, but she stepped in front and put her fingertips on his chest.
 
He stopped.
 
She felt as if she was holding back the tide.
 
His hands were fisted at his side, his breath gusted against her face, his heartbeat thudded against the fingertips she’d planted on his chest.
 
But for all that, he stopped.

She turned and stepped toward Dan. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Masters. You really shouldn’t fuck with runts. Because one day they get big.
 
And smart. And then they fuck you back.”